Truck Day has officially come and gone! That’s the first sign that next season can’t be too far away. It’s been a long, cold winter, and the long, cold winter is still going on, but at least we know that things are starting to stir down in Florida. Nothing gets you excited about the end of winter like equipment heading south for Spring Training!

Papi wants a multi-year deal. No news there. That’s what every player wants. The challenge is that it has to make sense for the team as a whole as well. This year we will welcome Jerry Remy back into the booth for the season.

In other news, the Bruins beat the Isles, 6-3, and the Panthers, 6-2, before losing to the Habs, 4-1. We then shut out the Oilers, four-zip, and beat the Canucks, 3-1, and Sens, 7-2, while losing to the Blues in overtime, 3-2, before the Olympic break.

We signed Jose Mijares to a minor league deal with an invitation to attend Spring Training. We also signed Grady Sizemore to a one-year deal plus a considerable amount of incentives. Things are shaping up.

The B’s lost to the Blackhawks, 2-3, in a shootout, and beat the Kings, 3-2, and Flyers, 6-1. As far as the Pats are concerned, we’re done. The season is officially over. We will not be advancing to the Super Bowl. The Broncos, however, are another matter, since they beat us, 26-16. We couldn’t run the ball, and the defense was porous. It just felt like something was off. I mean, granted, we were just really lucky this year; I guess the whole idea of a team fighting an uphill battle at every turn was a common theme in Boston. Anyway, we were fortunate to have come this far, and it’s a real testament to the team to have accomplished that. We’ve won a lot of critical games this year, many of them close ones. And then it just ended. So we’re out of the Super Bowl. It’s awful, and it hurts. But we can still be proud.

We have avoided arbitration yet again by locking down one-year deals with Carp, Tazawa, and Jonathan Herrera.

The big baseball news lately is the expansion of instant replay. Obviously, this has been a hot issue since it became an issue. Both sides of the debate have been pretty vocal in presenting their opinions, but I think it’s interesting and significant that the instant replay expansion was approved unanimously at the Owners Meeting, after which the Players Association and Umpires Association gave the go-ahead.

Starting this season, in addition to the review of close-call home runs, managers will have one challenge per game. The manager will be able to communicate with someone monitoring video being the scenes so he can make a decision about whether or not to use a challenge. As an extension of that, camera angles in all the parks now have to be standardized.

The has to verbalize his challenge to the umpire in a very detailed manner, so the umpire knows which parts of the play are being disputed, and in a timely manner, so the umpire doesn’t call for disciplinary action. If it’s denied, he’s used it up. If it’s approved, it’s replaced by another new challenge, but he can’t make more than two challenges. If he doesn’t use it before the seventh inning, it expires, and after the seventh inning, the umpire can elect to institute a review. All reviews will be conducted at the Majors media headquarters in New York, where four-umpire crews will be on hand, swapped out by rotation. Field umps would communicate with them via a headset behind home plate, and their decision would be final.

And, last but not least, now replays can be displayed on jumbotrons inside the park.

So most plays will now be potentially subject to review. As we all know, sometimes the lack of instant replay has burned us bad, and sometimes it’s helped us out. But that’s true for any team because it’s been the nature of the game; everything tends to balance in the end. Now, we’ll have to see whether instant replay balances things from the get-go. It’s just going to be a huge change. I mean, this is historic. Baseball has stayed the same for most of its existence when it comes to instant replay, in part because the technology didn’t exist in the early and middle years. Everything evolves, but we’re just going to wait and see what happens.

In other news, the Bruins lost to the Ducks, 2-5, and Kings, 2-4, but won a close one against the Sharks, one-zip, before losing to the Leafs, 4-3, and besting the Stars, 4-2. And the Pats, of course, bested the Colts by a healthy score of 43-22. Onward to Colorado!

In other news, the Bruins picked up big wins against the Sabres, Predators, Sens, and Jets but lost to the Sens and Isles. The Pats beat the Ravens, 41-7, in that landslide win I was hoping for! And we continued that with a strong showing against the Bills, beating them 34-20.

Victorino’s thumb surgery was successful, and he should be good to go for Spring Training. Andrew Miller’s looking forward to starting the season without a hitch as well. We traded Franklin Morales and farm pitcher Chris Martin to the Rockies for infielder Jonathan Herrera. And we signed Shunsuke Watanabe, a veteran submariner from Japan.

In other news, the B’s shut out the Flames and lost to the Sabres this week.

I’ll be taking a break of about two weeks. I think we’re all looking forward to seeing the team take shape.

So we went from a week of huge news to a week of basically no news. Papi wants a one-year contract extension, and Ben is maintaining a firm but low-key presence at the Winter Meetings. And that’s pretty much it.

In other news, the B’s beat the Flames, 2-1, and Oilers, 4-2, but the Canucks gave us a beating yesterday, 6-2. And the Pats dropped a close nailbiter to the Dolphins, 24-20. I’d really like to have a landslide win. We haven’t had one of those in a while.

Let’s get the small stuff out of the way first. We non-tendered Bailey and Kalish. Also, congratulations to Lackey on a well-deserved Tony Conigliaro Award. Not that that’s a small achievement, but it’s not disturbing and alarming like the big news of the week.

This week, we’ve had to deal with some significant departures. This is going to be rough.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia is our first departure. He is now a Florida Marlin, having signed a deal for three years and twenty-one million dollars. We acquired him as a veteran, and now he leaves as a veteran having helped us win the World Series.

Last year, Salty batted .273 with fourteen homers and sixty-five RBIs. He posted a fielding percentage of .994 and a catcher’s ERA of 3.88. But as with all great catchers, he contributed innumerable qualities like leadership and work ethic and skill with calling games and managing pitchers. Needless to say, the last three years, including October, would have looked very different without him, and he will certainly be missed. Salty, we thank you, and we salute you.

We welcome AJ Pierzynski, who has signed a one-year deal pending a physical. Last year, he batted .272 with seventeen homers and seventy RBIs. He posted a fielding percentage of .998 and a catcher’s ERA of 3.63. He’s gritty, and he’ll fit in just fine. We also welcome Edward Mujica, the righty reliever, who signed a two-year deal for $9.5 million.

Our other departure is different. This isn’t someone we brought in who has now decided to leave for a three-year contract. We say goodbye to someone we raised, who spent his entire career thus far with us, and who didn’t go to just any team. Jacoby Ellsbury is now a New York Yankee. It’s basically the same old story. They lured him over there with the type of contract that only the New York Yankees could provide: seven years and $153 million. So the Evil Empire offers these contracts like it’s made of money, since it basically is, and no other team can compete with that. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t seen this before. A star center fielder who bats leadoff and makes spectacular catches and helped us win the World Series and who is a Boston icon leaving for the dark side; where have I seen that before?

It’s just awful. Our job is to raise players in the farm so they can stay here. Out job is not to raise players in the farm so they can win a ring and then just leave and give their services to the highest bidder. That was never what baseball was supposed to be about. But that’s the reality in which we and the game find ourselves now.

It’s not our fault that we choose to be a responsible team that conducts itself in a responsible way. A contract worth that many years and that much money does not allow for much flexibility, which is what you need if you’re going to win. Think about our performance over the course of the past decade. Think about our performance over the course of the past year, about the acquisitions we made last offseason and where they led us in October. We should feel good about our success and about the business model and strategies that got us there. Hindering our flexibility by committing almost a whole decade’s worth of years and millions of dollars in three digits has not, historically, been one of those strategies. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us. It means there’s something wrong with them.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate Ellsbury’s achievements in Boston. He’s been hurt, but he has always powered through in true dirt-dog fashion, never shying away from making the tough plays no matter what mind kind of pain waited as a consequence. In his career, he’s bagged .297 with sixty-five homers and 314 RBIs. He has led the American League three times in steals. And he made only three errors last year. He helped us win not one but two World Series championships, making his presence seen and felt in both. I don’t think we’ll ever forget the way he patrolled Fenway’s center field with ease and made it look as easy as it really was for him to make catches that didn’t even seem to be humanly possible.

His seven years are up, and now he’s joined the darkness. Ellsbury, we thank you, and we salute you. But we feel disappointed, insulted, and betrayed.

Fortunately, Napoli is coming back. So there’s that sign of hope and optimism.

In other news, the Bruins lost to the Habs, 2-1, but beat the Penguins, 3-2, and the Leafs, 5-2. The Pats just barely, and I mean that in every sense of the phrase, eked out a win against the Browns, 27-26. It really went down to the wire. Seriously.